Updates, new content, and other helpful information from the LiveCycle Help Content Team

Forms IVS – A Form-tastic Development and Testing Tool

Adobe LiveCycle ES provides a sample web application called Forms Installation Verification Sample (IVS). This sample is a web-based application that interacts with the Forms ES service to generate interactive PDF forms, HTML forms, and form guides that users can fill and submit. After you deploy the Forms IVS, you can use a web browser to render form designs created in LiveCycle Designer ES for testing purposes. Another use for the Forms IVS application is for debugging the forms in isolation from the rest of your LiveCycle ES application that was created in LiveCycle Workbench ES.

In the Forms IVS application, you can configure various parameters that are used from Forms service operations. You can choose the output that is rendered, such as XHTML files or PDF forms, and test various transformation options. If you are interested in customizing the appearance of HTML output, you can also generate a CSS file that you can customize and use in your application. As a convenience for testing the Forms service, the Forms IVS application is configured with sample form designs.

Try it

To get started, you need to deploy the application to the application server. The application is installed with Forms ES on the LiveCycle ES server:[install location]/LiveCycle8.2/deploy/adobe-forms-ivs-[application server].ear.For example, after installing LiveCycle ES on Windows for a JBoss application server, the file is C:\Adobe\ LiveCycle8.2\deploy\adobe-forms-ivs-jboss.ear. To deploy on JBoss, simply copy the file to the [Jboss home]/server/all/deploy directory (JBoss can be running when you copy the file).Now, open a web browser, open the application, and configure authentication for the Forms service:

Go to the address http://server-name:port/FormsIVS. For Jboss, the default port number is 8080 and it is case-sensitive!

Click the Check/Change Your Preferences link. You can modify the following fields to point to custom form designs and data:

Content Root URI: This is the location where the form designs are stored.

Data URI: The location of the data files to merge with your form design.

In the Preferences web page, scroll to the bottom of the page and locate the Administrator User ID and Administrator Password fields, and type a user ID and password. The user ID and password you provide is used for executing the Forms service.

Click Save.

After clicking Save, the web page that renders the form design is loaded. Try testing a form design by configuring the following parameters:

Data files: PurchaseOrder_StaticInteractive_data.xml

Form designs: PurchaseOrder_StaticInteractive.xdp

Output format: XHTML

After you click Use EJB to send the request, rendered form appears in your web browser. If you select PDFForm or PDFMerge, the PDF form is opened in your browser when you have Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat installed.You can see these steps described in a video (no sound).

For More Information About How To Use Forms IVS

After you open the application in your web browser, click Help, which is located in the upper-right corner of the web page. All the information that you need for working with your own form designs and experimenting with transformations is there.

Hi Bill,Yes, you can use the repository to point to a form design. These locations can be used for the Content Root URI property value in FormsIVS.Repository: The repository contains assets that you upload to the LiveCycle ES server. The value repository:/// references the root of the repository. The first two forward slashes are part of the protocol (repository://) and the third forward slash represents the root of the repository.For example, a folder in the repository named form designs contains the form design named form.xdp. To access the form design, type /form.xdp in the Form To Render property and repository:///formdesigns in the Content Root URI property. The absolute path created is repository:///formdesigns/form.xdp, which is required to access the form design.Directory in the file system of the LiveCycle ES server: A location on the LiveCycle ES, such as C:\[foldername]. Using a location on the server is not recommended if you want to maximize the portability of the application.Network directory: A location on the network such as \\[folder name].Web location that is accessible by using HTTP: After uploading a file to location on a web server, you can specify the location using an URL, such as http://server name]:[port number]/[folder name].For the best portability for your LiveCycle application, use an HTTP or repository.Hope that helps!